Advances in Internet technology such as blogging platforms and website creation tools makes it easy and inexpensive for people to build blogs and websites. Such ease of use and cost effectiveness has enabled many individuals without computer programming background to use the Internet as a medium to present their “creations” to the rest of the world. These creations may include inter alia digital media such as photos, videos, animations, and music, as well as physical items such as paintings, crafts, mechanical devices, sculptures, and hand-made greeting cards. Creations may include existing media such as photos or text either alone or in combination with created media, or only created media. In the case of physical items, the person usually presents his/her creations, or the creations of another person, using visual aids that include photos and videos of the actual item combined with descriptive text. It may be noted that the terms creation, media item, digital media item and item are henceforth used interchangeably.
In some cases individuals wish to sell their creations over the Internet, i.e. perform e-commerce. Typically, individuals, henceforth referred to as sellers, use an existing e-commerce website to sell their creations to avoid the cost and complexity of attempting to add e-commerce capability to their own personal blog or website. Examples of existing e-commerce websites that enable a seller to sell their creations include Amazon Marketplace and eBay. Amazon Marketplace is provided by Amazon Inc. of Seattle, Wash. eBay is provided by eBay Inc. of San Jose, Calif. Such existing e-commerce websites enable a seller to list items for sale and to provide descriptive information including text, photos, and videos on a web page provided by the e-commerce provider. The e-commerce provider also handles shopping carts, accepts online payments, provides the seller with sales reports, and makes payments to the seller after deducting any sales commissions.
The e-commerce provider, in effect, creates and manages a store for the seller. Amazon Marketplace and eBay includes the seller's items within an aggregated listing in a virtual store specific to the seller. These websites typically provide a search facility to help visitors to the website, also referred to as buyers, find what they are looking for. While such e-commerce websites attract large numbers of buyers, the seller is not able to offer their creations in the context of a highly personalized, boutique-style website. Thus there is a need to sell creations easily and efficiently from a seller's personal website or blog.
In some cases, the items are some type of digital content and the e-commerce provider handles payment and digital delivery. For example, micro-stock photography websites such as iStockPhoto, found on the web at www.istockphoto.com enable sellers, who are typically photographers, to upload their photos to a website and sell a license to use the uploaded photos to buyers who typically use the photos for commercial purposes. The sellers' photos are presented within aggregated lists and the buyer typically uses a search capability to find a particular photo. iStockPhoto is owned by Getty Images of Seattle, Wash.
Some e-commerce websites provide value added services for digital media such as photo printing. An example of such provider is ImageKind which enables sellers to upload photos to the ImageKind website and enables buyers to select and order framed prints of photos. ImageKind provides e-commerce services including offering a shopping cart and payment processing as well as fulfillment services such as printing of digital images and framing of printed digital images. ImageKind, Inc. is based in Seattle, Wash.
The common approach used by each of the abovementioned e-commerce services is that descriptive information about the items (photos, videos, text, etc) is uploaded to a third-party website separate from the seller's blog or personal website. The buyer must leave the seller's blog or website, and visit the third-party website in order to review items and place orders. For the seller this may result in losing customers and hence reduced sales and potentially reduced customer loyalty. In addition, maintaining multiple online sales outlets, e.g. a personal blog or website, and various e-commerce websites, is time-consuming for the seller.
Therefore, a system and method for adding e-commerce to a seller's website or blog such that a buyer may purchase a creation without leaving the seller's website or blog is desirable.